Friday, December 09, 2016

I think Castalia House is going to have to create a team of diverse superheroes who pursue various white villains... and fail every time because they are diverse minorities who do the diverse things that minorities do.

This is the new Spiderman Homecoming team. You can just imagine how many ways things would go wrong with a pretty Halfrican girl who is an NBA groupie, a whip-smart Hispanic girl who always has to be right and argues about everything when she's not busy getting beat up by her gangster boyfriend, the gay Indian H1B who doesn't actually know how to use the computer technology in which he is supposedly an expert, and the fat Asian who keeps losing track of time in the middle of his Hearthstone matches and regularly collapses after 36-hour gaming binges.

And then, of course, there is the half-Jewish Spiderman, who agonizes over every decision, wondering whether it is good for Israel or not, is insecure about his sexual orientation, and is in love with both the Hispanic and the Halfrican to no avail.

Meanwhile, the white villains are running rings around them as they work towards enriching themselves, the Ascendance of their God-Emperor and the total destruction of the United Nations. I would read THAT comic book.

"You will not succeed in silencing me and defeating the PVV. Support for the party of freedom is stronger than ever and is growing every day. The Dutch want their country back!"

I suspect those eurofascists are going to be sincerely regretting their reprehensible and anti-democartic once the Dutch people put the PVV in power and Wilders becomes the Prime Minister. Never forget, if they can ban our speech, we can ban their speech. And if they do ban our speech, it is incumbent upon us to return the favor, with interest.

The Wilders conviction was quite literally a show trial. Every newspaper and government agency in the USA could be convicted of "insulting a group and inciting discrimination".

Dutch anti-Islam political leader Geert Wilders has been convicted of insulting a group and inciting discrimination. But no penalty was imposed by the court near Amsterdam on Wilders, whose party is leading in polls ahead of parliamentary elections in March. Wilders was also acquitted of inciting hate over telling supporters in March 2014 he would ensure there were fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.

One of the fundamental ways scientists measure the well-being of a nation is tracking the rate at which its citizens die and how long they can be expected to live.

So the news out of the federal government Thursday is disturbing: The overall U.S. death rate has increased for the first time in a decade, according to an analysis of the latest data. And that led to a drop in overall life expectancy for the first time since 1993, particularly among people younger than 65.

"This is a big deal," says Philip Morgan, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who was not involved in the new analysis.

"There's not a better indicator of well-being than life expectancy," he says. "The fact that it's leveling off in the U.S. is a striking finding."

One can't say it is surprising. The same thing happened in Russia under Yeltsin, when the country was being strip-mined by the oligarchs in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia has found its confidence again in its return to Christianity and nationalism, and both its birth rates and life expectancies are on the rise again.

If Americans are fortunate, the God-Emperor Ascendant will be half as good for his people as Putin has been for the Russians. The more foreigners are driven out, the more the secularists and atheists and pagans are forced to accept their second-rate status, the more America will be made great again.

Equalitarianism is neither just nor healthy, and diversity is no more a strength than war is peace or black is white. If it was, the diversity advocates wouldn't have to repeat it like a retarded mantra in defiance of all history and science.

The great irony is that allowing minorities equal status in a society is not only bad for the majority, it is almost always bad for the minorities themselves. After all, if they were even remotely capable of constructing a society in which they wanted to live in the first place, they would be the majority.

The historic Christians believe their religion is revealed by God in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, and that the Scriptures are the primary witness of that revelation. They believe the church is the embodiment of the risen Lord Jesus in the world and that his mission to seek and to save that which is lost is still valid and vital. Historic Christians believe in the supernatural life of the Church and expect God to be at work in the world and in their lives.

Progressive Christians believe their religion is a historical accident of circumstances and people, that Jesus Christ is, at best, a divinely inspired teacher, that the Scriptures are flawed human documents influenced by paganism and that the church is a body of spiritually minded people who wish to bring peace and justice to all and make the world a better place.

I realize that I paint with broad strokes, but the essential divide is recognizable, and believers on both sides should admit that “historic” and “progressive” Christians exist within all denominations. The real divide in Christianity is no longer Protestant and Catholic, but progressive and historic.

When I say “divide” I should say “battle” because both sides are locked in an interminable and unresolvable battle. Interminable because neither side will yield and unresolvable because the divisions extend the theological and philosophical roots of both aspects.

However, it is true that if you look at the dynamic of progressive Christianity, you will see that by the end of this century it will have either died out or ceased to be Christianity.

At this time, modernism still wears Christian clothes in the mainstream Protestant churches and in parts of the Catholic Church.

This cannot last much longer for 11 very simple reasons:

The most powerful reason, of course, is that progressive Christians do not actually believe in the supernatural, which means that in the most basic sense, they cannot reasonably be described as Christians at all.

Michael Sebastian makes much the same point, in rather less elevated language, on Return of Kings:

This message that God promises people a wonderful life has had a deep impact on the lives of many modern Christians. It is a message that fits perfectly with our hedonistic culture that puts pleasure above duty. Christian couples forego having children so they can travel or drive luxury cars. Lukewarm Christian women divorce perfectly good husbands in pursuit of the Prince Charming they think they deserve. Bishops and pastors preach only those parts of the gospel that make them popular with the secular culture.

Modern Christianity is also compromised in other ways. Rather than standing against the culture, Christian churches have tried to accommodate as much of the culture as possible. Some denominations have embraced Christian feminism, push for left wing social causes such as open borders, and bless gay marriages. For that reason, if you want to learn what real Christianity is, you will have to ignore recent teaching in favor of the past. A good rule of thumb is to simply avoid reading Christian material written after 1900. Listen to your Sunday Sermon but take it with a grain of salt.

Repent. Return to the fundamentals of the faith. Read the Word. Preach the Gospel. Go forth and multiply. And ignore all who tell you to follow the world on its broad and easy path to Hell.

hannah_in_azon December 8, 2016Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
This book is so filled with wisdom that I am planning to leave my copy in the airport on the way home for Christmas for anybody else who wants it. Consider it my end of year non-tax-deductible donation to a good cause.

I suggest putting a note on it; otherwise I suspect people will simply assume you forgot it. It's sad, but true, that almost everyone needs SJWAL these days.

And speaking of wokeness, there are other ways to spread it. I am informed we have an Original Galaxian sighting on YouTube.

French Socialists quite clearly don't understand how their actions in the National Assembly are likely to come back to haunt them before too many years have passed, if the Senate doesn't have the sense to reel them in:

The French National Assembly has voted to approve a bill that would outlaw some pro-life websites. The Socialist government wants to criminalise sites which it says “exert psychological or moral pressure” on women not to abort. The proposed offence would be punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment and a €30,000 fine.

Archbishop Georges Pontier of Marseille, president of the French bishops’ conference, has written to President François Hollande expressing his concern about the bill. Archbishop Pontier urged Hollande to not allow the bill’s passage, calling it a “serious infringement of democratic principles”.

French law already prevents pro-lifers from demonstrating outside abortion clinics. Supporters of the bill argue that pro-life tactics have now moved online and must be stopped.

The bill will now need to pass through the French senate, which blocked the legislation earlier this year.

Dominique Tian, MP for Les Républicains, said there was a “very heavy atmosphere in parliament” and accused the government of “attacking freedom of expression”. He said the government’s proposals were “dangerous for democracy and probably anti-constitutional”, and that his party would do all it could to stop them.

I mean, it's not like such a law would ever be used to criminalize sites that advocate alternative sexual preferences, or practices, or for that matter, Marxian economics, right? Now, I understand the principle of MPAI and I know that socialists tend to have a hard time anticipating logical consequences, but this is indicative of a short time-preference to an extent one seldom sees outside of primitive tribes that can't count to five.

In Selenoth, the race of Man is on the ascendant. The ancient dragons sleep. The ghastly Witchkings are no more; their evil power destroyed by the courage of Men and the fearsome magic of the Elves. The Dwarves have retreated to the kingdoms of the Underdeep, the trolls hide in their mountains, and even the savage orc tribes have learned to dread the iron discipline of Amorr's mighty legions. But after four hundred years of mutual suspicion, the rivalry between two of the Houses Martial that rule the Amorran Senate threatens to turn violent, and unrest sparks rebellion throughout the imperial provinces.In the north, the barbarian reavers who have long plagued the coasts of the White Sea unexpectedly plead for the royal protection of the King of Savondir, as they flee a vicious race of wolf-demons who have invaded their islands. And in the distant east, the war drums echo throughout the mountains as orcs and goblins gather in vast numbers, summoned by their bestial gods.Epic fantasy at its deepest and most gripping. Military fiction at its most fantastic. A THRONE OF BONES is Book I in the ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT series. Available in both paperback and case-bound hardcover.

Thanks to Matt, Robert, Markku, and Kirk, who somehow managed to find the time to get this out before next week's release of the early edition of Book II, and in between all of the other new releases to boot. Although the text is the same, it has had another round of deep proofreading and is a completely revamped print edition. Despite being Royal Octavo and larger than the Marcher Lord hardcover, it clocks in at 922 pages.

When it's cold outside, but you still feel the insatiable desire to trigger every SJW in visual range. That's right, Dark Lord Designs and Cryptofashion now offer THE TRUMPSLIDE HOODIE! Let's face it, that will never grow old.

The cold outside is frightful
But the election is still delightful
And when you need something to don
Put it on, put it on, put it on....

Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

I look forward to Facebook, Google, and Twitter all banning links to the shameful fake news site, the Washington Post.

It's the 3rd Law of SJW in action: SJWs always project. Learn to anticipate the enemy. SJWAL, now with 500 reviews, will show you how.

Stories reflect us, and we reflect them back at themselves, like one of Terry Pratchett’s witches standing at the heart of a room of mirrors: humanity all the way down. In the midst of real-world politics and their ever-evolving consequences, our narrow individual perspective is that of a character denied the author’s omniscience: we don’t know what to make of the pattern of things – if there even is a pattern – or where events are headed, and yet we still have to choose what to do in the moment. And so we look outside ourselves, to stories where we do really know what’s happening, to characters in whose hopes and fears we recognise our own. We might make jokes and memes about it, buy little rubber bracelets stamped with WWBD (What Would Buffy Do?) and laugh at our preoccupation with people who don’t really exist, but when the hammer falls and our own words fail us, theirs remain.

I must not tell lies.

We are not things.

If we burn, you burn with us.

Right now, we don’t need a Jedi Master to tell us that fear leads to anger, anger to hate, and hate to suffering: that’s not an abstract mystical tenet, but the bedrock of our current political reality. For the past few years, the Sad and Rabid Puppies – guided by an actual neo-Nazi – have campaigned against what they perceive as the recent politicization of SFF as a genre, as though it’s humanly possible to write a story involving people that doesn’t have a political dimension; as though “political narrative” means “I disagreed with the premise or content, which makes it Wrong” and not “a narrative which contains and was written by people.”

Yes, Foz, you really must not tell lies. It's rather egregious when you tell them right in the following paragraph.

I have written to John O'Neill, my former editor at Black Gate, asking him to remove this false, malicious, and materially damaging libel directed at me, and by extension, the Sad and Rabid Puppies. As I was a long-time contributor to Black Gate, Mr. O'Neill knows perfectly well that I am neither a neo-Nazi nor a National Socialist, I have never been a neo-Nazi or a National Socialist, I do not belong to, or subscribe to the tenets of, the German National Socialist Workers Party or any subsequent facsimile, and I do not appreciate the libelous attempts of Ms Meadows, to publicly and falsely assert that I am "an actual neo-Nazi".

Moreover, the link which was provided to demonstrate that I am "an actual neo-Nazi" actually proves the precise opposite. Therefore, it is a matter of public record that the information was published, I was directly or indirectly identified, the remarks were defamatory towards my reputation, the published information is false, and both Foz Meadows and Black Gate are clearly at fault.

I have great respect for John O'Neill, I still enjoy reading Black Gate from time to time, and I very much hope that he did not know about this malicious libel at the time it was posted. Now that he has been made aware of it, I tend to expect he will see fit to do the right thing and remove it from the article rather than pursue the SJW strategy and double down.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

There appears to be a battle going on inside Google between SJWs who want to fully converge the organization and more rational liberals who understand that way lies madness, reduced market share, and eventual disruption and decline.

Internal pressure is pushing for the expansion of hate speech to include everything and everyone that fails to submit to the SJW narrative, for more intense action against so-called "fake news", and even broader definitions of "fake news". So far, they are only cracking down on genuinely fake news, but there is some belief that this is the proverbial dipping the toe in the water, to see what they can do without provoking a backlash.

The victory of the God-Emperor Ascendant was a massive blow to the SJWs inside Google, and like most SJWs, they have completely lost the plot post-election. They were openly calling other Googlers racists, sexists, and homophobes just for voting for Trump. Those are firing offenses at Google. Google has insane civility requirements imposed on anyone talking to a member of a protected group, but apparently calling for all Republicans to be fired is perfectly acceptable.

Of course, if they were to get their way, this would be tantamount to Google cutting it's own throat in the Age of Trump, but because the authorities there are amenable, the internal SJWs will not be excised and will continue to converge the organization.

But permitting the SJW infestation to get worse is short-sighted and self-defeating. Every social media organization which is corrupted and converged will be disrupted and replaced. Both Google and Amazon are keeping their SJW infestations under control for the time being, but the question is, how much longer before they can't keep a lid on it and they go the way of Twitter, Apple, Wikipedia, and other declining technology giants.

The social media giants are increasingly demonstrating themselves to be the servitors of Big Brother. White is black, day is night, Islam means peace, and real news is fake news:

Under the guise of tackling “fake news,” Google is removing search results that pertain to crime statistics that show black people commit more crimes, despite the fact that this is widely documented to be true. An article in the Guardian entitled Google ‘must review its search rankings because of rightwing manipulation’ details how “leading academics” are pressuring Google to artificially edit its search algorithm to prevent certain subjects from appearing at the top of its search rankings. In response, the piece notes that Google has removed search results that suggest “black people commit more crimes”. Negative results about the religion of Islam were also removed.
This is alarming given that virtually every metric proves that criminality is more prevalent in black communities compared to white and Hispanic communities in America. It’s an uncomfortable fact that black people commit more crimes than any other race in America, but it’s a fact nonetheless. Claiming that reality is actually “fake news” because it suits your political stance doesn’t change the nature of reality.

Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks commit around half of homicides in the United States. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed 52% of homicides, compared to 45% of homicides committed by whites.

More up to date FBI statistics tell a similar story. In 2013, black criminals carried out 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, again despite the fact that there are five times more white people in the U.S. From 2011 to 2013, 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black. This figure is three times higher than the 13% black population figure. Black males aged 15-34, who account for around 3% of the population, are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes.

Despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa, according to FBI statistics from 2007. A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.

While it is understandable that Google would want to prevent neo-nazi content from appearing at the top of its search rankings, the fact that the tech giant is now censoring objective facts under the justification of tackling “fake news” is chilling.

This indicates that Google, along with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites, are using the excuse of “fake news” to bury factual information that is inconvenient to leftist political narratives.

This dedication to falsehood and deception will only make it all the easier to disrupt them when the time comes. Furthermore, the charges of "neo-nazi" are every bit as dubious as the charge of "fake news".

It's one thing for one's life to be transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. It is real. I have seen remarkable transformations of people's hearts, character, behavior, and spirit take place in the lives of friends, acquaintances, and strangers. That being said, I've yet to see Christianity do much to transform one's intellect, one's height, or one's intrinsic capacity for empathy or logic:

Black women have great faith in God, but they have a twisted understanding of His role. They do not pray for strength or courage. They pray for results: the satisfaction of immediate needs. One of my clients was a black woman who prayed in a circle with her accomplices for God’s protection from the police before they would set out to commit a robbery.

The mothers and grandmothers pray in the hallways–not for justice, but for acquittal. When I explain that the evidence that their beloved child murdered the shop keeper is overwhelming, and that he should accept the very fair plea bargain I have negotiated, they will tell me that he is going to trial and will “ride with the Lord.” They tell me they speak to God every day and He assures them that the young man will be acquitted.

Before you dismiss the observer as a hateful racist hater, consider that as a public defender of liberal persuasion, he not only spends more time than anyone reading this with low-income Africans attempting to help them, but has probably bled a considerably greater quantity of hearts-blood over their fates as well.

There was a fair amount of talk about EQ a few years ago, and there is an increasing amount of discussion of pathological altruism. What is gradually becoming apparent to me is that Western civilization not only requires a base level of intelligence, but also a base level of empathy. Any population group with an average level of either intelligence or empathy that falls below that level is not going to be able to participate in European civilization or sustain a reasonable facsimile on its own.

Christianity certainly helps support the development of empathy in an individual by providing a strong rational justification for it, but it observably does not create it ex nihilo in the human breast. I suspect it would be eucivically useful if there were standard tests for empathy as reliable as those for intelligence.

I just finished Stefan's podcast with you about Capitalism. The thing that really struck me is that one always has to be on the lookout for opportunities, something my dad always told me, but you resurfaced. And the example that struck me was Gab. In hindsight, it was an obvious decision. Everything lined up perfectly for its launch.

Which brings me to Youtube. A few months ago they launched their Youtube Heroes program, which is nothing more than an attempt to censor wrong groupthink under the guise of "preventing harassment". However, alt-teching Youtube would have a much larger capital requirement than Infogalactic or Gab. I could easily see burning through $20k in hosting fees per month with no end in sight. So I was wondering:

What is your opinion on such an endeavor?

Technically its not too difficult, but without external VC, what would be a valid startup strategy?

What happens when the SJW police deem it to be "Youtube for racists" and advertisers are bullied to pull out?

From the financing side via donations do you see a donation model working with the much larger capital requirements?

I know that Vid.me made some passing comments on freedom of speech after Heroes was launched. However several high-profile accounts were suspended or shutdown this week for wrongthink. And they have yet to jump on such an opportunity.

In answer to his questions:

I think disrupting YouTube is biting off more than the Alt-Tech community can presently chew.

Backers with deep pockets. This is the sort of thing that the rich Republicans who finance think tanks and political action committees should be doing, but they're not, because they fail to understand how technology and culture drive politics. For the money that was wasted on Jeb Bush's futile campaign alone, both YouTube and Facebook could have been disrupted. The reason the Right has been losing the culture war for decades is because it has been stubbornly determined to fight the Vietnam War with WWI tactics.

Bully right back. Go after the competitors advertisers; it's not as if they aren't supporting pedophilia and a whole host of dyscivic and even dyscivilizational sins considerably worse than "racism". Concerns about "racism" are so 1980s, they're not even remotely relevant to a multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious society now engaged in bare knuckles identity politics.

No. It's a chicken or the egg situation. Like VC, donations tend to flow most freely when they are totally unnecessary. For example, Infogalactic's donations presently run about 1/2500 that of Wikipedia. We'll beat them anyhow, thanks to the Original Galaxians, the Techstars, and the Burn Unit, but it's a bit ironic that people are least inclined to donate when the Alt-Tech organizations need it most. Once Gab and Infogalactic have successfully disrupted Twitter and Wikipedia, that will be the time bigger prey can be targeted, because more people will believe it to be possible.

Timing is everything. It's the right time to disrupt Twitter. It's the right time to disrupt Wikipedia. It's too soon to disrupt YouTube or Facebook. They're simply too big and insufficiently vulnerable to credibly take on at the moment. But, it's true, their censorious actions tend to indicate that they will be vulnerable to an alt-teching in the future.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I failed out to remind you that you, too, can be a part of the Great Disrupting by the Alt-Tech by subscribing or donating to Infogalactic. I'm informed that Infogalactic is currently at 8.5 percent of the Phase Two goal, and 15 percent of the inital goal of a 1000-strong Burn Unit. The good news is that the Techstars are getting close on the phase one speedups that Infogalactic needs to become functionally competitive with Wikipedia.

You know how everyone says "someone ought to do something?" Well, the Infogalactic team is doing just that. Be a part of it.

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

It's always interesting to speak with Stefan Molyneux; this time we were talking about business, work, and success. In my opinion, the important thing to accept about success is understanding that it's not you. Sure, you have to work hard and do your part, but you are not the only factor. You are FAR from the only factor. There are a number of factors involved, and of them all, timing is almost certainly the most important. Sometimes you can recognize, but more often, it's just a matter of luck.

Some say that luck is made, but I think it is more akin to something that you have to be already working to exploit for the moment it arrives. I think of it like a surfer and a big wave. If you haven't taken the time to learn to surf, bought a surfboard, then swum out to sea, you're not going to catch it. If you're on land and you see it, it's already too late.

Our big point of disagreement was about volunteers. I think they are crucial, so long as you're willing to be ruthless about weeding out those who don't make the grade for many, many different reasons. Stefan is dubious about them, but I can state for a fact that neither Castalia nor Infogalactic nor Gab would have gotten anywhere without a reliable core of dedicated, hard-working volunteers.

Scott Cole of the Castalia House blog interviews Castalia author John C. Wright about his recently completed trilogy, (and first quarter of his MOTH & COBWEB duodecology) The Green Knight's Squire, which consists of the following three books:

Scott Cole: After reading both books my thought is the series is influenced by The Once and Future King and shares similarities with the Book of Revelations (i.e. descriptions of some of the beasts, especially at the first elf tournament), Shakespeare, Narnian anthropomorphism, and Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch along with a multiple mythological references.

John C Wright: You are a little off, but not too far. Any similarity with Lukyanenko’s NIGHT WATCH is pure coincidence. Shakespeare I certainly steal from, but I don’t recall stealing anything from Narnia, aside from a mood. I am not a fan of T.S. White; I take my Arthuriana from Mallory and the Mabinogion and Tennyson’s IDYLLS OF THE KING. Alan Gardner’s WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN is also an inspiration.

Since the book is called SWAN KNIGHT’S SON’S SQUIRE, expect to see the events of THE SWAN KNIGHT’S SON played out. Also, I decided to borrow the bad guys from G.K. Chesterton’s THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, and to make Gil a member of the Last Crusade.

SC:What was the inspiration for the Moth and Cobweb series?

JCW: Once upon a time I asked my editor, Vox Day, what I could write that would reach a wider audience. He suggested writing something aimed at the juvenile market, and said that talking animals were always popular. He also admired my short story ‘A Parliament of Beast and Birds’ which appeared in the anthology BOOK OF FEASTS AND SEASONS.

The mystery of where writers get their ideas is a perennial one, but the truth is that we have no more ideas than anyone else. The difference is that, unlike muggles, we write our ideas down and use them. Every writer I have ever met keeps a notebook in purse or pocket or in his smartphone where he jots down ideas.

So, I threw the idea of a talking animal into the pot and looked through my notebook of unused ideas to find what else might go into the stew. Usually a writer needs three ideas to get the ball rolling.

I had the germ of an idea that had been in the back of my mind for some years, a juvenile originally set in a mythical place called Uncanny Valley, Nevada, where four seniors in high school, cousins, each had to do an apprenticeship or internship over the summer with one or another of their mad uncles. Instead of the normal jobs, because some of their uncles were from beyond the fields we know, the kids end up being a squire to a knight, the sidekick to a superhero, a sorcerer’s apprentice, or something of the sort.

A second idea came not from my notebook but from my wife’s Harry Potter inspired role playing game. Like all the games we run, we made up our own rules. In her role playing game, she decided that in addition to buying character stats like strength or scholarship, dexterity and intelligence, you could also buy social stats like fortune, friends, fame, and family. So, for example, an orphan with a vast bank account would have a zero in family and high marks in fortune, whereas a poor boy from a large and supportive family would have the opposite.

One innovation in her rule system, which I had not seen used elsewhere, was that each player had a star he could use to mark one stat and only one he had purchased, and this carried a secret benefit revealed in the course of the game. So, for example, putting a star in scholarship gave the character total recall. Putting the star in family meant you were a member of the largest and most supportive extended family imaginable, the children of the seneschal of Titania, the Moths. This did not give you any magic powers, but it meant that you had uncles and cousins both in the human world and beyond, including royalty, famous scientists, mermaids, and so on. Indeed, my wife had umpired more than one game with these rules, so it became sort of a running joke that I always played a member of the Moth family. My first character was named Dusty Moth, and he was a cowboy from Utah, and an amateur alchemist, who had the blood of elves in his background.

The third idea came from the song ERLKOENIG or the medieval tale of TAM LIN, where a boy is being sold by the elfs to hell. I had noticed that elfs and fairy creatures from the days before Tolkien and Gary Gygax, and indeed from before Shakespeare’s MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, were actually quite spooky and frightening, not the pretty and twee tween girls of Disney’s Tinkerbell cartoons.

I noticed traces of the sulfurous scent of the inferno clinging even to such recent and childish works as DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE, a favorite film of mine, based on an older series of books, where the Leprechauns are terrified by the powers of a parish priest, whose blessings and exorcisms can shrivel them. Even in the lighthearted Disney version, as in the original books, the elfs are angelic beings who neither aided Satan during his rebellion, nor fought on the side of Heaven, and so were cast out of paradise, but not all the way to Hell.

It's a really good interview. Read the rest of it there. And the books are really good as well. If you ever enjoyed Susan Cooper or Lloyd Alexander, you will almost certainly enjoy John C. Wright's MOTH & COBWEB series.

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal first “broke” in the far-right blogosphere. The accusation they made was that these gangs were being allowed to operate undisturbed because everyone was too afraid of “appearing racist” to properly investigate them . . . and nobody listened to the far-right bloggers who were breaking this story because they were afraid of “appearing racist” if they gave any credibility to those far-right sources, too. Never mind that it seemed paranoid to rely on bloggers to report truths like these when the allegations were so wide-reaching, involving a literal conspiracy within the police force.

And yet, years after no one was willing to take them seriously, the far-right blogosphere turned out to be right.

Well over a thousand (mostly) white young girls were being abused by (mostly) Pakistani gangs.

And the authorities were covering it up.

We are now, once again, in the stage of an evolving scandal that Mehrdad Amanpour described his experience with above. Just to be clear, I’m not going to commit myself to the idea that this is going to be as huge as Rotherham was. We should be careful: we don’t know what would or wouldn’t be confirmed with a proper investigation. The question here is not whether we’ve gotten to the bottom of this online. The question is whether there is enough here to justify thinking there should be a proper investigation.

And the parallel with Rotherham is that the relatively small number of people asking for that are mostly the loathsome kinds of people who run “racist far-right websites.” So, since the claims are inherently conspiratorial, and the mainstream doesn’t want to be associated with those people who are talking about it, it is once again all too easy to just dismiss the claims out of hand as paranoia run wild.

Again, the evolution of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was an extremely painful lesson that the mainstream can be wrong and the “paranoid racist far-right” can be right. And that lesson was far too expensive to simply let go to waste.

The name of this scandal is Pizzagate.

It is always a mistake to dismiss facts because one does not approve of the messenger. It is, in fact, a formal failure of logic known as the Genetic Fallacy. The sun does not become the not-sun simply because the Alt-Right calls it the sun anymore than a man becomes a woman because an SJW calls him a her; that is a form of magical thinking and it is intrinsically illogical.

The fact is that we don't know what lies beneath the smoke of Pizzagate. There may or may not be hellfire there. But one need not subscribe to all of the 16 Points to scent a distinct odor of sulfur. In any event, this is a useful summary for mainstream readers who are understandably reluctant to venture forth into the dank swamps of the chans.

It's intriguing to see that the fake "attack" on Comet Ping Pong appears to be convincing Hillary Clinton voters to look further into Pizzagate.

Do you believe that society should draw the line at all when it comes to limitations on hate speech?

No. Hate speech laws are wrong. The question – not a question, but THE question – is ‘who gets to define hate?” That’s not to say there’s no such thing as hate speech – clearly there is. Hate speech laws repress, and I mean that in the psycho-analytical sense. They drive [hate speech] underground. It’s not a good idea, because things get ugly when you drive them underground. They don’t disappear, they just fester, and they’re not subject to correction. I made these videos, and they have been subject to a tremendous amount of correction over the last six weeks. I don’t just mean from my public response, but also partly from the university’s response, partly from a group of friends who have been reviewing my videos and criticizing them to death. This is why free speech is so important. You can struggle to formulate some argument, but when you throw it out into the public, there’s a collective attempt to modify and improve that. So with the hate speech issue – say someone’s a Holocaust denier, because that’s the standard routine – we want those people out there in the public so you can tell them why they’re historically ignorant, and why their views are unfounded and dangerous. If you drive them underground, it’s not like they stop talking to each other, they just don’t talk to anyone who disagrees with them. That’s a really bad idea and that’s what’s happening in the United States right now. Half of the country doesn’t talk to the other half. Do you know what you call people you don’t talk to? Enemies.

If you have enemies, you have war.

If you stop talking to people, you either submit to them, or you go to war with them. Those are your options and those aren’t good options. It’s better to have a talk. If you put restrictions on speech, then you can’t actually talk about the difficult things that need to be talked about. I have about 20,000 hours of clinical practice and all I do for 20 hours a week is talk to people about difficult things – the worst things that are going on in their lives. These are hard conversations all the time. The conversations that are the most curative are simultaneously the ones that are most difficult and most dangerous. Most normal people will not have those conversations. That’s why so many marriages dissolve. People don’t like to have those conversations. Part of that too, is because – let’s say you have a little tiff with your wife, and you know there’s more to it than the little thing that’s bothering her, and you ask ‘what are you REALLY upset about’? Try peeling that back. You might find she’s upset about something her grandfather did to her grandmother two generations ago that hasn’t yet been resolved within the family, and that’s the determining element of her attitude at the present moment. If you unpack it though, then you don’t have to live it over and over again.

There’s also this idea that you shouldn’t say things that hurt people’s feelings – that’s the philosophy of the compassionate left. It’s so childish it’s beyond comprehension. What did Nietzsche say: ‘you can judge a man’s spirit by the amount of truth he can tolerate.’ I tell my students this too, you can tell when you’re being educated because you’re horrified. So if its pleasant and safe, it’s like you’re not learning anything. People learn things the hard way.

People learn things the hard way because MPAI. The reason why the mainstream media and the Left hate the Alt-Right so much is that unlike the conservatives and moderates, they understand that we will never submit to them. And the reason they fear us is that they know we will utilize every tactic they use against us. Especially because every time they deny us a platform, we simply build a replacement, and moreover, one that is actually superior to the original platform.

I don't have a problem with hate speech laws. After all, there are so many kinds of hate speech that need to be banned.

Sarah Hoyt, we are pleased to report is alive, while her fellow Mad Genius wonders what, exactly, the SF-SJWs expect the Sad Puppies to do about me, and by extension, the Rabid Puppies:

Essentially as result of inactivity the Puppies left the field to Vox and “Raptor Butt invasion.” Which was funny for a while, but after a while you realize that it’s puppy butt that’s being invaded.

OMFG. I don’t know whether to beat my head against the wall or the OP’s. That statement is not that much removed from that of the other side telling SPs they had to denounce Vox or it proved we were all cut from the same cloth. One thing those of us closely involved with the Sad Puppy movement learned in 2015 is that there is nothing anyone can do to rein in Vox. We would have had Raptor Butt no matter what. Vox will do what he wants, when he wants and he doesn’t give a flying fuck who he bumps against in the process.

That's why it's important to pursue anti-fragility if you are not inclined to submit to being thought-policed. It gives one that freedom to think, speak, and act as one sees fit. That doesn't mean I'm free of all constraint, of course, it's only that I am answerable to my supporters rather than megacorporations who could not care less about me and ideological enemies who seek to destroy my career and many of the things I value as well as many of the things in which I believe.

As for Rabid Puppies, I don't know exactly what we'll do yet next year; with the Hugo rules changes and the establishment of the Dragon Awards, new strategies are required. It's always wise to reassess the situation when it changes, and the ongoing growth of Castalia House also means that we have to reconsider and prioritize our objectives. But regardless, we'll always have "Space Raptor Butt Invasion", and we'll always sport these with pride.

It's always easy to tell when a group of people have given themselves over to untruth. Their philosophy, their theology, and their politics all rapidly become observably incoherent. Evangelicals, and many of the evangelical organizations, are now following the example of other Christian denominations in walking the broad and easy path towards Hell, and they are doing so on the basis of their mealy-mouthed Sunday School Churchianity.

As the election retreats like a hurricane heading back out to sea, first responders are assessing the damage left in its wake. One casualty is the reputation of evangelicalism. Evangelicalism was closely associated with the campaign of Donald J. Trump, and more than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for the president-elect. This, despite large numbers of African-American, Latino, Asian, young and female evangelicals who were fiercely opposed to the racism, sexism and xenophobia of Mr. Trump’s campaign and the hypocrisy of a candidate who built a casino empire while flouting morality.

As a result, much of the good that went by the name “evangelicalism” has been clouded over; now a new movement is needed to replace it.

When it comes to religious identity in America, the fastest-growing group is the “nones.” Nearly a quarter of all Americans, and over 35 percent of millennials, report no religious affiliation. Nones, many of whom grew up within evangelicalism, often still affirm faith in God. They left the church because they gave up on evangelical leadership. Nothing sums up their objections more clearly than evangelicals’ embrace of Mr. Trump. Didn’t Jesus say, “Blessed are the meek” and “Love your enemies”?

Throughout the campaign, there was dissent even within the ranks of evangelicalism’s most conservative institutions. While the old guard, like the Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, were ardent Trump supporters, the best-selling evangelical author Max Lucado and the Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore were both early critics. At Liberty University, the largest evangelical college in the country, thousands of students signed a petition denouncing the support of its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., for Mr. Trump and insisting that they were more interested in being Christian than in being Republican.

Andy Crouch, the executive editor of Christianity Today, criticized both candidates, writing that enthusiasm for Mr. Trump “gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.” He added, “They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us.”

As white male evangelists, we have no problem admitting that the future does not lie with us. It lies with groups like the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, led by Gabriel Salguero, or the Moral Monday movement, led by William Barber II, who has challenged the news media on its narrow portrayal of evangelicals. For decades, we have worked within evangelicalism to lift up the voices of these “other evangelicals.”

But we cannot continue to allow sisters and brothers who are leading God’s movement to be considered “other.” We are not confident that evangelicalism is a community in which younger, nonwhite voices can flourish. And we are not willing to let our faith be the collateral damage of evangelicalism.

We want to be clear: We are not suggesting a new kind of Christianity that simply backs the Democratic Party. Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican — even if, as William Sloane Coffin Jr. once said, his heart leans left. Many faithful Christians did not vote for Hillary Clinton because of their commitment to a consistent pro-life agenda. True faith can never pledge allegiance to anything less than Jesus.

But Jesus-centered faith needs a new name. Christians have retired outdated labels before. During the late 19th century, when scientific rationalism fueled the questioning of Scripture, “fundamentalism” arose as an intelligent defense of Christianity. By the 1930s, however, fundamentalism was seen as anti-intellectual and judgmental. It was then that the term “evangelicalism” was put forward by Christianity Today’s first editor, Carl F. H. Henry, as a new banner under which a broad coalition of Jesus followers could unite.

But beginning with the culture wars of the 1980s, the religious right made a concerted effort to align evangelicalism with the Republican Party. By the mid-’90s, the word had lost its positive connotations with many Americans. They came to see Christians — and evangelicals in particular — as anti-women, anti-gay, anti-environment and anti-immigrant and as the champions of guns and war.

Mr. Trump did not create these contradictions, but his victory has pulled the roof off the building we once called home. It’s time to build a new home.

The amusing thing about their philosophical ineptitude is that they don't realize they are making an overt case for Christian theocracy, the reality of which would of course horrify them because they have absolutely no intention of abiding by anything genuinely Christian at all; this is nothing more than shallow pandering to the worldly zeitgeist using a few inappropriately applied Bible verses as justification.

Moreover, it demonstrates that at least when it comes to Churchianity, race trumps religion in the hierarchy of identity politics. As usual, the Alt-Right perspective is the only one that makes any sense of this incoherent and degraded evangelicism.

Here is a useful metric for Christians: if the New York Times Carlos Slim's blog is affording you space for your views and generally striking a positive tone about them, you are absolutely wrong and whatever you are pushing is antithetical to genuine Christianity. No one - no one - is ever going to be inspired to follow Jesus Christ as a result of your pandering to the approval of the global elite. It is literally anti-evangelist evangelicism and its new home is godless churchianism.

Monday, December 05, 2016

A letter from Penzey's Spices reveals they are fully SJW-converged. Also, that they are amusingly delusional. The amusing thing is that they think anyone was paying any attention to their "stand", and that they think they've proved "Donald Trump simply has no one supporting his views for America".What it really means is that no one is paying attention to their idiot politics. Yet.

Dear CEO,

Please give us a moment to share something we hope you will find very valuable.

Our customers come from all walks of life. The kindness of cooks knows no borders or divides. In the aftermath of the election, seeing the intentional damage inflicted on so many outside the white heterosexual male world, we raised our voice. We felt we had to. We did this because we are Penzeys. The Spice business is so intertwined with history that it's not really possible to have one without the other. It became clear to us that we are now in a moment history will long have its eyes upon. For the sake of our customers, and for the sake of future generations, we felt the time had come to stand on the right side of history.

And while the reasons for why we took a stand might be specific to our unique outlook, what we learned actually applies to all commerce in the United States. What we learned is that President-elect Donald Trump has no real support. Voters, sure, but no constituency. Running a campaign on "that horrible-terrible-woman who should be locked up," while at the same time working to raise fear of minorities among white voters with limited access to education, clearly achieved its goal. But none of it left Americans with any sense of connection to the candidate they actually voted for.

Willing to take a hit for what is right, we did what we did. In the two weeks since, online sales are up 59.9%, gift box sales up 135%. And we didn't have a catalog arrive in this window this year, while last year we had 1.1 million! Yes, maybe for the moment we have lost 3% of our customers because of the so-called "right wing firestorm." And, yes, they send emails of rage, and ALL CAPS, and bad language with the hope of creating the perception that they are bigger than they really are. But what we learned is that, in terms of retail spending, Donald Trump simply has no one supporting his views for America. He has no constituency.

America's Values, on the other hand, have a really sizable constituency, and that constituency moves quickly to support those that stand up for the values of America. If, as a company, you have values, now is the time to share them. You may well lose a chunk of your AM radio-listening customers, but if you really are honest and sincere, don't be surprised to see your promotions suddenly, finally, find active engagement with the Millennial generation.

And the time for this really is now. We understand all too well that, with the holidays, December is a tough month to get things done. We understand that a change in direction will not be easy, but you are where you are because you don't need things to be easy. If you wait until after the wheels come off the track for the incoming administration, this moment will have passed. And while there's no bad time to do the right thing, to do the right thing at the same time as others in your industry will work so much better than waiting until someone else has shown the way.

In this moment there is finally the real chance to unite our nation in our shared rejection of sexism, homophobia, and racism. This is your chance to stand up for America's values and make January a tent pole in your company's history. Opportunities to do the right thing at the time when doing the right thing makes all the difference come once in a lifetime. Make your history proud.

The German government has reacted to the shocking news about a Muslim migrant who raped and killed a 19-year-old woman by warning that it would be watching Facebook posts carefully for instances of Islamophobia.

A teenage Afghan asylum seeker was arrested on Friday for the alleged rape and murder of medical student in Freiburg which took place last month.

The victim’s father is a senior EU official and a vehement supporter of the migrant policy that has seen over a million “refugees” pour into Germany over the last year. The aftermath of the murder was made even more bizarre by the fact that the victim’s parents used her funeral to raise money for charities that are working to bring more “refugees” into Germany. The victim herself was also a “refugee activist”.

As if the story couldn’t get any more disturbing, the German government’s response was to warn German citizens who expressed anger over the incident on Facebook that it would be on the lookout for Islamophobic hate speech.

Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel asserted that the murder should not be used to stoke anti-migrant sentiment.

These monsters are even more delusional and morally vacuous than the National Socialists were. I find it absolutely incredible that the German people continue to tolerate them. Here is hoping that the nationalism rising across Europe will soon sweep them into the deepest dustbin of history.

A North Carolina man who sent customers and employees scrambling when he fired a gun inside a northwest Washington pizzeria Sunday told police he went there to investigate a fictitious online conspiracy theory involving the restaurant and high-ranking Democrats.

Police received a report of a man armed with a rifle at Comet Ping Pong about 3 p.m. Sunday.... The gunman fired at least one shot from the rifle into the floor, but no one was hurt, police said.

The incident drew heavy police response. Dozens of officers with guns drawn were in the streets, and a helicopter circled above the scene. Police arrested 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina, and charged him with assault with a dangerous weapon. Police recovered two guns inside Comet and another inside the suspect's vehicle, which police towed away from in front of the pizzeria.

After his arrest, Welch told police he was there to investigate a fake news conspiracy theory known as "pizzagate" involving the pizzeria in the 5000 block of Connecticut Avenue NW. Posts to Facebook and Reddit claim Comet was the home base of a child sex abuse ring run by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign chair, John Podesta.

So, we're supposed to believe that he went there "investigating" with an assault rifle, and fired one shot into the floor at no one? That sounds totally credible. It actually raises the question: who hired Edgar Maddison Welch to play the part of an armed and dangerous conspiracy theorist? He's a failed actor listed on IMDB. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Alefantis himself hired the guy to "attack" his own restaurant.

Castalia author Peter Grant, the author of the post-Civil War western Brings the Lightning, has just published a new book in his Maxwell Saga, Stoke the Flames Higher. We don't publish this military SF series in ebook, although I'm pleased to announce that Castalia will be publishing all five books of the Maxwell Saga in print and audio, as well as all three books of Peter's Laredo series, the third of which we will be publishing in ebook as well. Peter has posted an excerpt from the new book, and I can confirm that you don't have to have read the four preceding volumes in order to pick up the story here.

Peter had considerable military experience in South Africa and it shows in his writing; he knows whereof he writes.

Also, Peter has reviewed the input of his readers regarding one of his next projects, and he has decided to proceed with the space detective story, which he apparently intends to bring to Castalia. I'm delighted to hear that, since, as QUANTUM MORTIS fans know, I'm rather partial to space detective stories myself. In the unlikely event he would like to situate it there, instead of in the Maxwell universe, he'll certainly have my permission. But regardless, we'll be more than happy to publish it. And yes, this is actually how we work, with our publishing decisions not only being made without our involvement, but sometimes without our knowledge.

In other book news, I experimented with Amazon's new KDP paperback system yesterday, and a paperback version of On the Question of Free Trade was the result. I chose it because a) we were never going to get around to doing it via our normal system, and, b) it struck me as the sort of book you might want to give someone or carry around to use as a reference in an economics course. I have to confess, I was VERY disappointed to learn that the system is nothing more than an integrated version of the CreateSpace system, as I thought it was going to auto-generate a print layout from the Kindle file. I expect that's what Amazon ultimately has in mind, but they certainly aren't anywhere near there yet.

Since some of our authors will no doubt be curious about it, here are the pros and cons I observed.

PROS

It's pretty easy to use and the Cover Creator's limitations should ensure that you can't screw up the spine placement very easily.

It's fast. It takes about one week to get a published book up on Amazon through our usual system. This took only 12 hours. However, it doesn't automatically connect to the Kindle edition any more automatically than non-KDP-published books, which is a little odd.

The printing price is pretty good. $2.15 for a small book like that one, and eighty-five cents plus 1.2 cents per page for up to 828 pages.

You can upload your own cover images and use them in a variety of ways in the Content Creator.

It doesn't cost anything and it's integrated with KDP. This will take yet another chunk out of the mainstream publishers, and in combination with Kindle Unlimited, will probably cause the Big Five to shrink to four, and possibly three.

Although you can't just use the Kindle file, you can provide either a formatted PDF or an unformatted Word document for the text.

They give you a free ISBN.

CONS

The 40 percent slice that Amazon takes in addition to the print charge is pretty hefty. This will preclude most independent publishers from using it. We'll probably use it for some books, like On War and some of our less popular books that aren't even on the print production list, but it will never be our primary option.

I've never heard anything good about the quality of the CreateSpace paperbacks and there is no reason to believe these will be any better. There was a reason we looked for a better alternative from the start. I'll be very interested to know what people make of now On the Question of Free Tradeturned out because I have absolutely no idea. So, please consider yourself warned in that regard.

Distribution is limited to Amazon. CreateSpace tried to claim otherwise, which wasn't really true, but Amazon isn't even bothering to try. Amazon is the big dog, but it's not the only market out there and an increasing percentage of our book sales are print books sold though other resellers. Although we still tend to think of ourselves as an epublisher, and barely half our books are even available in print editions, 40 percent of our sales are now in print.

The ISBN is only good for use on Amazon.

There is no way to identify the publisher or imprint.

Conclusion: absolutely great for self-publishers, of minor interest to authors with publishers, a potentially useful second option for low-margin independent publishers, and a complete nightmare for high-margin traditional publishers. I expect most successful authors are going to increasingly gravitate to the Peter Grant approach, and making publication decisions based on a series-by-series basis. As for me, I think I will use it to publish all of my collected WND columns in a two-volume paperback set, which will be useful for my own reference, if nothing else.

And finally, in case you missed it over the weekend, Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson is finally available in paperback and hardcover editions. Don't think you've seen the end of the book shilling either, because we have no less than FOUR (4) big announcements to make before Christmas.

Speaking of which, I would like 10 volunteer reviewers who are familiar with ATOB. If you're a) interested in reviewing ASOS and b) you've already reviewed ATOB on Amazon, please send me an email with ASOS in the subject and a link to your review on Amazon.

What happened? We locked your account because we determined that it violated the Twitter Rules.

What you can do: To unlock your account, you must do the following:

Verify your phone number

Verify your email address

Delete Tweets that violate our rules

If you think your account has been locked in error, you can contact our support team on a subsequent screen.

While I'm not formally suspended from Twitter, I won't be going back there again since I can't access the account without giving them a phone number. I don't sign up for any social media service that requires a phone number, I never gave them a phone number in the first place, and I'm not about to give them one now.

Since that means I can't even see what tweet supposedly violated their rules or delete it, I won't be logging in there anymore. It's very clear that Twitter is an SJW-amenable authority and it's simply not worth it to try to play with their stacked deck. If you want to find me on social media, find me on Gab, where I've already got 12,139 followers, including many #DreadIlk and #VFM. At the rate they've been growing, I expect I'll have more than the 27,500 I had on Twitter before April.

I prefer Gab anyhow. The engagement is more substantive, there are fewer SJW performance artists, and it's run by a fearless Alt-Tech leader who doesn't give a damn about safe spaces or the propagandists in the mainstream media. As Mike Cernovich never tires of pointing out, we don't need them. They need us.

A D.C. pizza restaurant has become a target of harassment and negative reviews on social media after it became a victim of fake news stories that went viral just before the presidential election.

Using the hashtag #PizzaGate, many on social media slammed Comet Ping Pong after floating conspiracy theories claimed the pizza shop along with Hillary Clinton and her campaign were involved in child trafficking and satanic rituals.

But all of the claims against the popular Northwest D.C. pizzeria are false and unfounded. The D.C. Police Department said they are not investigating Comet Ping Pong and are instead keeping an eye on those who are threatening the restaurant and employees.

Remember these people when the truth finally comes out and they start talking about how terrible it is and how no one could possibly have known. They close their eyes, declare it's night, and insist that anyone would have to be insane and lying to say otherwise.

Given that the police are not investigating, and have not investigated Comet, Podesta, or any of the freaks in that circle, how can anyone possibly state that ALL of the claims are "false and unfounded". Especially when they don't actually mention any of the specific claims that have been made or discuss any of the evidence that has been assembled.

Now, why oh why would these journalists resist even looking into a story as potentially juicy as #Pizzagate? Maybe because it strikes too close to home? I don't see any statement about the age of the photography subjects there.

Sunday, December 04, 2016

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has lost a referendum on constitutional reform by a wide margin, exit polls showed on Sunday, throwing his future into doubt and opening the door to renewed political instability in Italy.

Renzi, who had promised to resign if his flagship project was defeated, is due to address the nation at around midnight (6.00 p.m. ET), government sources said.

An exit poll by the Piepoli Institute/IPR for state television station RAI, estimated the 'No' vote at 54-58 percent against 42-46 percent for 'Yes'. Two other polls gave 'No' a similar lead of at least 10 points. Voting ended at 11 p.m.

Far-right candidate Norbert Hofer has lost the race for the Austrian presidency and has conceded defeat as the first results emerged. As the polls closed at 4pm UK time, exit surveys indicated left-leaning candidate Alexander Van der Bellen has taken an unbeatable lead in the election with more than 53 per cent of the vote. Hofer would have been the first far-right politician elected to national office in Europe since World War 2.

It's not even close to being over; it has barely begun. But it does go to show how remarkably short-sighted the Left is. But thanking a God in whom they don't believe for the continuation of their own enslavement does nicely demonstrate the fundamental incoherence of what passes for their thinking.

This is not even a setback. Even if Renzi somehow managed to win the Italian referendum, this would change nothing, because the historical trends are very clear and picking up both speed and strength.

Today Prime Minister Renzi's attempt to centralize the Italian government in order to render it more subservient to the EU occupiers is going to fail. This will be the second domino to fall after BREXIT, the third may be the ascension of the nationalist Austrian Freedom Party to the ceremonial role as President:

Donald Trump’s victory—which shocked Europe’s political and media elite—gives the populists backing the “No” side of Italy’s referendum the political rocket fuel they need for a virtually guaranteed win.

That momentum will be all but impossible to reverse. Anti-elite sentiment is rising on both sides of the Atlantic. And I bet the global populist revolution will continue.

If Italians buck the establishment—and it looks like they will—it will clear a path for a populist party to take power and for Italy to exit the euro.

If that happens, the fallout will be catastrophic for global markets. The Financial Times recently put it this way:

An Italian exit from the single currency would trigger the total collapse of the eurozone within a very short period.

It would probably lead to the most violent economic shock in history, dwarfing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008 and the 1929 Wall Street crash.

If the FT is even partially right, we’re looking at a possible stock market crash of historic proportions. This is why we’re watching the December 4 referendum so closely.

The referendum is meant to concentrate more power in Italy’s central government. On that point alone, everyone should oppose it. The centralization of power never leads to good things.

A “Yes” vote is effectively a vote of confidence in the current pro-EU Italian establishment. This is what the global elite wants.

A “No” vote is how the average Italian can give the finger to the faceless EU bureaucrats in Brussels, whom many blame—quite correctly—for their problems.

Trump’s win has been a double whammy for Italy’s pro-EU establishment.

First, it emboldens the populist forces fighting the referendum.

Second, it humiliates and politically castrates Matteo Renzi, the current Italian prime minister. Renzi took a rare step when he openly endorsed Hillary Clinton. He was the only European leader to do so.

As one of Renzi’s rivals said after Trump’s victory, “Matteo Renzi is politically finished from today, he’s a dead man walking.”

Other Italian politicians are furious that he weakened Italy’s standing with the new Trump administration....

Austria

Austria is holding a presidential election, also on December 4. It’s actually a redo of an election held in May, where a populist candidate, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party, barely lost.

Austrian courts found irregularities in the results and ordered a prompt new election. But when opinion polls showed the populist candidate in the lead, the government delayed the vote until December 4, giving a lame excuse about faulty adhesive on absentee ballots. Despite the foot-dragging, Mr. Hofer looks set to win the December 4 vote.

France

France has a presidential election next spring. There’s a chance that Marine Le Pen, leader of the Eurosceptic National Front party, will do better than many expect. After more than a decade of disappointment under presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, French voters are clamoring for something different.

Spain

Spain recently re-elected incumbent Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. However, Spanish voters fled traditional political parties en masse for new populist upstarts Podemos and Ciudadanos. So Rajoy was unable to form a majority government. Rajoy now leads a severely weak minority government. The political power of the Spanish populist parties is only expected to grow.

Germany

Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, embodies the European establishment more than any other politician. Her party suffered a series of stinging defeats in regional elections this year, mostly because of her signature lax immigration policies, which have flooded Germany with migrants. Merkel’s troubles have only helped the Alternative for Germany, a new populist party surging in popularity. The party could pose a real problem for Merkel in the 2017 federal elections.The Netherlands

As the Netherlands approaches elections in March, Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which advocates leaving the EU, is basically tied in opinion polls with the establishment parties.

Meanwhile, the children of EU elites are literally being raped and murdered by the very "refugees" they welcomed inside their nations. Their trans-European globalism isn't merely untenable these days, it is very nearly as intellectually finished as Communism.

Better this complicit traitor lose his child than any of the innocent German parents who are enduring an invasion of their nation thanks to their treasonous elite:

A teenage Afghan asylum seeker has been arrested in Germany for the rape and murder of a beautiful 19-year-old medical student. Maria Ladenburger was found dead in the university city of Freiburg, near the border with Switzerland in mid October. According to media reports, she was the daughter of a high-ranking EU official.

A single strand of hair found at the crime scene led investigators to a 17-year-old migrant who arrived in Germany last year as an unaccompanied minor. The suspect has confessed to the murder, according to police. He was arrested on Friday and will go before the courts next year. Maria was drowned after being raped, her body found in the River Dreisam on October 16.

One can certainly have sympathy for the murdered girl. No young woman should suffer such a fate. But for the father, there can be none. He literally sacrificed his daughter on the altar of his idiotically ahistorical ideology. If only the elite would pay more of the price of their policies, perhaps they would not govern so foolishly.

If you're still stupid enough to advocate for open borders or bringing refugees into the country, keep in mind that the next victim of immigrant crime could be your child. Some amount of crime in a society is escapable. But 100 percent of immigrant-related crime is absolutely avoidable and totally unnecessary.

I think he should have accepted it, mostly because Trump will end up firing a neocon who doesn't abide by his policies as directed within months, if not weeks:

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was offered the Deputy Secretary of State position by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team, but declined because he “could not support a Secretary of State that didn’t have Trump’s policies”, according to a source with intimate knowledge of the process.

The source told GotNews that Rohrabacher, who was being considered for the Secretary of State post, refused to serve under a Secretary who did not align with Donald Trump’s foreign policy views.

Rohrabacher, an “outspoken Trump enthusiast” and long-serving member of the House called “Putin’s favorite congressman” for his pro-peace views, stands out among the other potential picks for head of the State Department, such as Trump-hating failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney, gun-grabbing classified info leaker David Petraeus, and neoconservative warmonger John Bolton.

The Deputy Secretary of State position is currently filled by Obama’s Tony Blinken, who was appointed in 2015. The Deputy Secretary of State is the chief assistant to the Secretary and replaces them as Acting Secretary in the case of death or other emergency.

Rohrabacher evidently chose not to take his chances and risk serving under a conventional establishment Secretary of State with pro-war, anti-Trump foreign policy views, such as Mitt Romney, John Bolton, or David Petraeus.

Rudy Giuliani, another contender for the post, was exclusively revealed by GotNews to have failed his own vetting process, likely due to his recent foreign lobbying. Giuliani is no longer in the race.

Helton Strom is just a guy between contracts when he runs afoul of both planetary officialdom and space pirates. He is left with nothing but the clothes on his back, and not even a citizenship to his name. Is the ancient, broken-down military surplus starship and the young lady living aboard it the key to a bright future, or will his repairs and new mercenary friends reawaken the demons lurking in the ship's murky and lethal past?

BACK FROM THE DEAD is the first book in The Stars Came Back series. It is a space western, the story of regular folks just trying stay alive, seeking work to earn money for repairs to get to the next job, with no shortage of action and adventure along the way. It is military sci-fi, featuring a company of mercenaries, spaceship combat, mortar and rifle combat, spear-and-shield battle, and post-traumatic stress disorder. And it is a philosophical investigation, pondering everything from the lessons of Achilles to how one stops a bar fight with earplugs.

The space liner’s lounge is sparse and spare, dim with the faint, reddish light that indicates the night shift. A few round ports and several screens line the walls above solidly mounted furniture. Helton slouches at an angle, half-facing Art, an elderly businessman with a dazed expression on his face and a drink in his hand, looking absently out one of the larger viewing ports. His coat is in a heap on another chair, and his bag supports his feet. “By the time it was over, virtually all my assets were forfeited on the spot, I’d been stripped of citizenship, and searched by the Blue Gloves way more personally than I’d like. How?” He shakes his head slowly in disbelief. “How did we get here?”“It could be worse,” the old man says quietly. “You are here, yes?”Helton stares at him, incredulous. “Well, yeah, but–”“Not in jail. Not in uniform.”“They wouldn’t–”“Still breathing.”Comprehension dawns on Helton’s face. He takes a drink, then says, “But I don’t understand. Why?”“They get a percentage of any fines or forfeitures they assess, as an ‘incentive’ to be attentive to the letter of the law. Likely you were put on a list some time ago, and this was just the easiest opportunity to make you go away. If they hadn’t gotten busy with that bomb on Level Eight, you might still be there.”“Wha…? Bomb? Nobody said anything about a bomb.”“The disturbance that called them away?”“But that was some sort of transformer explosion in an electrical vault…”Art looks as him with a slight shake of his head and a knowing, apologetic smile on his face. “Always buy a round trip ticket. Always have the appearance that you have good reason to come back, and no plans to do otherwise. Terrorist, separatists, false flag — makes no difference.”“You…?”“You are just now realizing what’s been going on these last months and years?”Helton says, feebly, not even accepting his own excuse, “Been busy.”“People have had to flee on a moment, packing light, for thousands of years. The warning signs of collapse are always the same. The debt. The scapegoats. The lies. The ‘temporary emergency measures.’ I cut it closer than I should have.” Art shrugs and takes a drink from his own glass. “My family is all safely away, and everything else shipped ahead for us by others.” A small, sympathetic smile crosses his wizened face. “It looks like you won’t be returning, either.”Helton looks at him in disbelief, frowning, brows knit. Quietly, in shock, he says to himself, “Homeless.” He turns his gaze back to the port, staring blankly.“You are lucky, though,” Art says.“If this is lucky, I’d hate to see unlucky.”“They picked you clean, but they let you leave.” He looks intensely at Helton. “Think. What do you have? Where are you going?”He shrugs, waves to his coat and bag. “My sister’s.”“And?”Helton shakes his head, still not sure what Art is asking. Art taps his temple, then his chest. Then waves to the room around them, at the glass in Helton’s hand. Slowly, forcing himself to think positively, Helton taps his temple. “I have … useful skills … and knowledge.” He touches his chest. “I’m heading for family … who will welcome me. Work. I’m not sucking vacuum or” he holds up his glass, “dying of thirst in a desert. Better off than Odysseus meeting Nausicaä.”A big smile spreads across the old man’s face. “A man of education.”“Not enough. Didn’t see this coming.”“It will serve you well. Never forget your assets, just because you acquired some new liabilities. Have faith in yourself, and you’ll be okay. God works in mysterious ways.”Helton looks at Art silently for a long moment. He drains his glass, unconvinced.

The Kellogg Co. said in a statement that it regularly works with media buying partners to “ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values as set forth in our advertising guidelines.”

Kellogg’s guidelines state that it won’t place ads in media that “encourages offensive behavior to others, or where the media is not consistent with our product or corporate image.”

The cereal company said that it advertises on a large number of websites, “so occasionally something is inadvertently missed. In this case, we learned from consumers that ads were placed on Breitbart.com and decided to discontinue advertising there.”

It is common for companies to buy online ads through third-party networks or ad exchanges that place the ads on numerous sites. As a result, many companies may not be aware of which sites on which their ads ultimately appear.

Other companies that have pulled their ads from Breitbart in recent weeks include the insurance giant Allstate and the ad exchange AppNexus.

I don't know about you, but I think I can give up Rice Krispies for America. But it's good to know that we can refuse to do business with those who don't share our values.